Been here at Fred Howard since Wednesday last week. Have seen nothing but 10-15 winds everyday. Today it was 18-25 and mostly on the 25 end! It was my first day ever at shortboarding and the Mistral rep was here and let me try out all the Mistral boards. I tried out the Prodigy, the Emotion 165, the Emotion 131 and the Screamer. Pretty much spent the entire day demo-ing Mistral boards.

Had the most fun on the Mistral Screamer 105 liter board. It barely felt like I was touching the water it was going so fast. All I kept thinking was "please dont make a mistake and get launched"! William, remember when I kept telling you that I wasn't going fast enough yet? OK, now I am going fast enough!!! The locals have been giving me tremendous help and I feel like I am learning progressively.

Best of all I am the young stud out here. Most of the guys (Gals too Mimi) that were passing me by were 65+ years old. Two people were 78 & 79 years old.

If you fall in the water (actually at todays wind speeds you dont fall in the water, you are launched) you are just waist deep and ready to try out a waterstart.

Patrick